


till no vein in my body is quiet without you

by amells (aeviternal)



Series: as if i had a string somewhere under my left ribs [5]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Almost Kiss, F/M, Mutual Pining, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26615377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeviternal/pseuds/amells
Summary: With a bounty on her head, it only makes sense that Unit Bravo return to their role as the detective's protective detail. Whatever else could they fill their hours with, when one of their own is once again in danger?Only it's been weeks since the carnival, and Adam has quite forgotten how to act around her.
Relationships: Detective/Adam du Mortain, Female Detective/Adam du Mortain
Series: as if i had a string somewhere under my left ribs [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1917049
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	till no vein in my body is quiet without you

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _one person tracing the other’s lips with a fingertip until they can’t resist any longer, tilting their chin towards them for a kiss_
> 
> set somewhere in book three probably so vague spoilers ig

Over the years, Adam has often heard it said that history has a habit of repeating itself. Be that in small ways or larger ones, it would seem that some souls simply find themselves walking the same paths without forethought or awareness; that some events cling too strongly to the earth to be entirely washed away, no matter how hard the world around them might try.

Adam puts little stock in most belief systems. Perhaps the closest label he might ascribe to would be ‘atheist’, but even that is a mere afterthought; he is not Nate, and he has had plenty of time to grow bored with philosophy and religion.

And yet. Even he must admit that, in this one small analysis, the world is not wrong; history _does_ repeat itself.

The Unit have not been so relegated to protection detail since their first arrival in Wayhaven. It has been only a matter of months since those days — barely a blink of an eye, compared to his lifespan — and yet the return to such a routine is… galling. Incongruent. Bizarre.

So much has changed. Murphy. The Maa-alused. The carnival itself.

June.

 _The detective,_ he means. She has — they have _all_ — changed.

Still. Cycles. The world has only one way to turn. The enemy has come, as they always do, and once more he and his team are left to protect the thing their foe wants most.

The Trappers are not Murphy, perhaps, but in the end, the result is the same.

Farah and Nate have spent the most time guarding the detective as of late. Morgan’s senses are too invaluable to spare when she could be patrolling the town for threats, after all, and Adam—

Well. He has had his own work. His own patrols. And he has always been better suited to working from a distance, these past few months notwithstanding.

Still, Adam du Mortain has never been a man to shirk his duty. And, whatever efforts the others might make on her behalf, he knows that the detective will never be as well protected as she will be with him.

By which, of course, he means that he is the strongest of their team. He means that he is capable of feats that the others simply are not. He does not mean— It is not—

You understand.

It’s a brisk morning, for all that they’re cresting summer now, and the detective spends the entire walk to Haley’s Bakery with her hands in her pockets, huffing out misty breaths and dancing on her feet for warmth. 

She’s replaced her much-beloved denim jacket with something thicker, puffier, something that rustles every time she moves, and it makes her look somehow smaller than she already does. As though her usual oversized hoodies do not complete the job well enough.

They do not talk. They _have not_ talked, not properly, since—

Well. Since the carnival, perhaps. And to look at her, you would not know it; she still smiles at him, still jokes and laughs and _shines_ like the sun made flesh, but there is something… wooden to it, now. As though she is waiting, every moment, for it to fall apart.

Her pulse still skips to look at him. Not as much as it had that night, their palms brushing, her radiating warmth at his side, but— but it happens.

And he is a _fool_ for encouraging it.

They pass through the door to the bakery as Adam is still flagellating himself, the bell ringing somewhere above their heads and the scent of pastry and coffee filling the air. And under these fluorescent lights, the detective _blooms._

“Honey, I’m home!”

The baker is behind the counter, fussing with a display of cakes, but she straightens up when she sees them, turning a grin on the detective that is almost as bright as June’s own. “June! How’re you doing today?”

“I’m good. How’s my absolute _favourite_ baker-slash-coffee-dealer on this _cruel_ cold morning?”

The baker snorts. “You don’t have to butter me up, y’know.”

Detective Lovelace drapes herself over the counter as though it were a pillar of fine marble and not merely a sickly-smelling construction of glass and pine, batting those big brown eyes at her. “I don’t know _what_ you’re talking about.”

Her grin — in a feat Adam would previously have thought impossible had he not known her these past months — widens.

The baker rolls her eyes with a good-natured smile, darting a curious look Adam’s way that is soon redirected by his stony silence. _“Right.”_

Then, wiping her hands off on the striped apron across her front, she says, “your usual?”

 _“Fuck_ yeah. You’re an angel, a light in the darkness. A goddess among women. A Titaness.”

Her nose wrinkles as she heads for the coffee machine. “Titan— are you calling me fat?”

“I’m calling you _beautiful,_ Hales, don’t get it twisted.”

The baker snorts again, shaking her head.

And then there’s a pause. Adam does very well with pauses, generally; he learned remarkably quickly how easily they could be ignored, favouring silence above small-talk even in his youth.

But this is— this is different. He cannot quite pin down why.

The detective clears her throat, then nudges him with an elbow. “Want anything, big guy? I’m buying.”

Adam takes a moment to reply, because the proximity, brief as it was, has her scent catching in his nostrils, drowning out vanilla and cinnamon with strawberries and cotton. He is used to the smell of nicotine and smoke by now, after so long with Morgan, but perhaps the detective smokes a different brand, because for a moment he finds himself dizzy.

The moment passes. He clears his throat, shakes his head, then says stiffly, “I’m fine.”

The detective’s brows rise. “You sure? Nate _loves_ the blueberry muffins here.”

“I am sure.”

“Hm. Is that a Nate thing, then? Or, like— no wait, Farah loves junk food. Is _this_ an Adam thing, then?”

He blinks at her for one very long moment.

Eventually, she rolls her eyes and clarifies quietly, leaning close again: “Y’know. _Human food._ Not liking it, or whatever?”

They are the only people in the bakery this early in the morning, and the baker is still preoccupied with the coffee machine, which is whirring loudly. If it had been otherwise, perhaps Adam would reprimand the detective, but she is… careful, here, as she so rarely is with anything else.

And so he allows himself to respond, “Nate and Farah are… different. For the rest of us, it is— unappetising, shall I say.”

The detective hums thoughtfully, eyes narrowing. Then her nose wrinkles. “Shit, dude. Sucks to be you, I guess. The four-cheese from Giuseppe’s is _to die for.”_

Adam’s lips twitch. “I shall have to take your word on that.”

“Yeah, guess you will. So, wait, _why_ is it so unappetising? Is it just, like, _by comparison?_ Is a good ole’ cup of O-neg just totally orgasmic, or something?”

Did— she cannot have just said what he thinks she has just said. Can she?

 _Of course she can,_ he thinks, meeting her dancing eyes. _She’s June._

Adam shakes his head, aiming for chiding and falling short. “That… is not the word that I would use.”

The detective purses her lips. “You’re dodging the question, Agent du Mortain.”

“You ask poor questions, _Detective Lovelace.”_

She laughs and it is a startled sound, like a bird pushed from the nest, but it’s— goodness, it’s lovely. He has not made another person laugh in so very long. He had… forgotten, quite, just how thrilling it could be.

“Answer it anyway?”

Sighing as though he were greatly put-upon, he acquiesces, “our senses are— too refined for most foods that you would consume. It can be overwhelming.”

She processes this for a moment or two, her brows furrowing. Then: “Wow. And here I thought nothing could overwhelm you.” 

June’s grin is cheeky, yes, but in a warm kind of way. _A wonder._ She is a wonder.

“Now, we both know _that_ cannot be true.”

Her smile turns surprised, confused and just-slightly lopsided, and she blinks at him rapidly for a moment, her brow beginning to furrow. 

_Why would you say such a thing, you imbecile?_

June’s mouth opens as though she were about to reply, and Adam is both dreading and waiting with bated breath for it—

 _“Here_ ya go.” 

Adam flinches. The baker has set down a thickly-scented to-go cup of coffee, and she’s looking between them with the beginnings of a smile lurking at the corners of her lips, brow cocked.

His fists clench. He affixes his gaze to a spot over the baker’s shoulder, a part of the chalkboard where an old offer has been only-mostly scrubbed away, and very carefully thinks of nothing.

After a moment, the detective clears her throat. “Uh, yeah. Thanks, Hales. Purveyor of the precious bean juice.”

A huff masquerading as a laugh. “Anytime, June. You want anything else? Maybe something for your man here?”

 _Her man._ What— what _foolishness,_ what absolute _madness._ He is— Adam is _no one’s_ man, and he is most _certainly_ not the detective’s, whatever anyone else may think, however she might make him feel.

Not that she makes him _feel_ anything in particular, of course, however much Nate might argue to the contrary. Not that his chest had jerked at the very _idea_ of them being— of her and him— of the baker being correct in her utterly outlandish supposition.

The detective laughs, too loud and just an octave off-kilter. “You should do stand-up, Hales, you’d _kill.”_

“Uh-huh.”

 _“Adam_ won’t have anything. And I— just the coffee, you know me. I _live_ off this shit. Like, uh— like zombies, only it’s caffeine instead of brains. _The Walking Dead,_ Lovelace style.”

_“Right.”_

The baker rattles off a price and Detective Lovelace passes the cash over, and then they pause briefly at the condiments for her to spoon in one, two, three, _four_ sugars.

“I can feel you judging me from here,” the detective comments on their way out the door, and Adam frowns.

“I am not judging you.”

“No, you totally are. You get this _tiny_ little crease between your eyebrows when you’re judging something. And I should know, man, I’ve seen it, like, a _gazillion_ times.”

His lips purse, and he makes a conscious effort to relax his forehead and smooth out his brow.

The detective snorts. Then, in sing-song: _“I still saw it.”_

He shakes his head. “I was merely thinking that things… make a great deal more sense now.”

“Hey, I am a _grown-ass woman,_ du Mortain, and grown-ass women can have as many sugars in their coffees as they want.” And then, as if to prove her point, she takes a sip.

The urge to smile is one he only-barely manages to tamp down on. “So it would seem.”

“Glad we agree.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpses her smile. All teeth and pink lips and dancing eyes. The early-morning sunlight is slanting over her face, seizing her bronze hair and setting her aflame. She really is just—

His foot catches on a cobblestone. It takes only a matter of milliseconds to right himself, but still. Adam has not tripped in— in _decades._ Centuries, perhaps.

“Woah there, old man,” the detective teases, knocking her side into his. “Don’t go breaking a hip there.”

He grumbles something unintelligible, shoulders tensing when she laughs.

“I am not going to _break a hip.”_

“No? Could’ve been quite the fall, man. And you’ve gotta be careful, y’know, in your _twilight_ years. _Ooh,_ double joke. Those are rare.”

Adam scowls. “I am hardly as breakable as _your_ kind.”

She whistles lowly. _"D_ _amn,_ the human jabs are coming out. Must’ve been a _nasty_ fall. Gonna tell me to get off your lawn next?”

“I should never have told you my age.”

The detective grins. “But’cha _did.”_ And then, elbowing him again, she adds: “It was kinda funny, admit it.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“Oh, c’mon.” She steps into his path, grinning up at him without a care in the world. “Just a tiny bit? A little? A _smidge?”_

Despite himself, he feels his lips beginning to jerk. And he can hardly have that, so his scowl darkens and he shakes his head. “Detective.”

“Adam?” She bats her lashes.

And in the face of those big brown eyes and that sunshine-smile, his resolve crumbles. “Fine.”

 _“Fiiiiiine—_ what?”

“Fine.” He gives her a stern look, because perhaps he is willing to unbend for her, but only so far.

June pouts just slightly, and it is then that he becomes aware of the smudge of coffee at the corner of her mouth. Tiny, barely noticeable in fact, just a stain of deep brown lapping over part of her lip and some of the pale skin around it, but suddenly the only thing that he can see.

He clears his throat. “Ah. You have—”

“What?”

He gestures vaguely to his own mouth, and June blinks at him, wide-eyed, for a moment, as though he has done something truly obscene, before realisation hits and she laughs.

“Ah, shit. Thanks.” She tugs the sleeve of her hoodie out from her jacket and uses it to rub her lips roughly. “Gone?”

“No.” He points to the approximate spot on his own face again, and again she misses.

And then, easy as breathing, his hand is reaching out to catch her chin and he is wiping it away.

Her lips are— they’re soft. Warm. He can feel her breath against the pad of his thumb, and that is warm too. And she is _wonderfully_ yielding under his touch, her teeth faintly solid through the meat of her lip on his up-swipe, mouth all pink and plush and lovely.

She smells like coffee now. Would she taste like it? It would be so easy to just lean forward and find out. To learn just how abominably sweet those four sugars really are. They would be bearable, he thinks, on these lips. _DMB_ would be bearable on these lips.

Of its own accord, his thumb begins to trace the rest of her. The pretty swell of her lower lip, right in the middle; the other corner, her teeth flashing white behind it when he peels it down slightly; the fine curve of her cupid’s bow, sturdier than any archer’s. She is so _soft._ Almost fragile. Like china, only— only _warmer._

Her throat bobs when she swallows.

Would she let him kiss her? Would she welcome him? 

Would she kiss him back?

He cannot bear to meet her gaze just yet, but her breathing is a little uneven, and when he listens— yes, there it is. The stutter in her pulse that he has become so accustomed to, that he treasures so dearly. Her ears are pinking, too, a flush beginning to spread across the ripe apples of her cheeks.

Perhaps— perhaps she would?

When he has finally gathered his courage, he lets himself look her in the eye. And such splendid eyes they are too, darker than usual but so _big,_ like a doe’s perhaps, her lashes all soft and wispy.

June blinks, pupils blacker than anything and so much bigger than he’s ever seen them. By God, they are so close now, she and he. Her breath just-barely brushes his chin with every exhale. He wants to feel that breath all over him, wants it _against his lips,_ wants to taste it and commit it to memory so thoroughly that he will remember it a hundred years from now. A thousand. 

His thumb has stilled, index and middle finger cradling her chin, and _oh,_ it really would be hardly anything at all to tilt her head up. Just a little bit. Just enough that he would not need to stoop in half to meet her.

She swallows again, blinking rapidly, and her tongue darts out to wet the side of her mouth that he is not touching. Adam finds himself following it with his eyes, his need sitting so heavily in his chest that he can scarcely breathe. 

And then she clears her throat; a creaky, hoarse sound, as though it were full of rocks. “Did, uh— did you get it?”

“Yes,” Adam croaks, snapping his hand back as though it had been burned. “I— yes.”

June nods as the world tidies itself into its proper perspective around her. “Right. _Right._ Cool. Uh— tha— yeah, thanks.”

“You are welcome,” he acknowledges roughly, not looking at her, rubbing his thumb over his fingers to make sure he does not forget her skin. 

He cannot forget her skin.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote most of this when i was deeply sleep deprived so soz if it's a mess lads but sometimes it just be like that
> 
> as always catch me over on [tumblr](https://solasan.tumblr.com/) babes x


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